【20% Engagement rate!!】 Tips to managing instagram in Taiwan

Hello, I’m Leo Sato (@slamdunk772), the CEO of applemint, a digital marketing agency in Taiwan!

I’m sure many of you who are operating businesses in Taiwan are using social network such as Instagram and Facebook. So here’s a question for you! Do you have thousands of followers? If not, don’t worry because the number of followers doesn’t mean anything if the followers do not interact with your post.

But if you have thousands of followers and seldom get response from your followers when you post, that’s a problem. This is the case with most Japanese companies managing Instagram in Taiwan. In other words, the engagement rate of their accounts is extremely low.

Engagement is the act of followers liking or sharing your post. Many Japanese companies in Taiwan have Instagram accounts with low engagement rates.

Low engagement rate means that even if you post something on Instagram, your followers are not interested in that post. Many companies pay advertising agencies a lot of money every month to post, but many users ignore the posts.

Why is this happening? How can we create an account with high engagement? Also, what happens when you have a high engagement rate on Instagram? What type of benefits will companies embrace?

In this blog, I would like to answer these questions so that companies in Taiwan can manage Instagram more efficiently. More specifically, I’d like to show you how we’ve been able to achieve such high engagement rate on instagram

Why is your Instagram engagement rate low?

First of all, I would like to answer why the engagement rate of many Japanese companies’ Instagram accounts in Taiwan is low.

I believe the reasons are the content of the posts and the lack of knowledge and effort on the from the Instagram operator. If the operator is an advertising agency, he/she needs to work harder….

Let me explain one by one:
1. Content of the post: as the word implies, it means that the post content is not interesting to the followers.

If you look at the Instagram accounts of many companies, you will see beautiful pictures of their products, but if the engagement is low, it means that their followers are not looking for such pictures.

In fact, you need to change the content of your posts depending on the number of followers you have when you manage social network. When you have a smaller number of followers, you need to provide useful information to your users, not a series of your products’ beautiful pictures…

2. The lack of knowledge of the operator:The biggest advantage of using social network is that you can create fans and interact with them easily.I often see how the Instagram operators in Taiwan don’t understand this and only focus on posting.

So what does it mean to interact with fans? Let’s take a look at the case of applemint.

applemint’s Interaction with Fans

I’m going to state the conclusion first. Interacting with fans on Instagram means actively approaching posts and accounts that are related to the products and services you offer.

For example, if I were running a soccer team in Taiwan, I would proactively approach people who are interested in soccer in Taiwan.

You can search for the hashtag “#足球” and if you find an account that posts your team name with the hashtag, you can comment, “Thanks!” on their post.

This is the “interaction” that is crucial for building a fanbase on social networking sites. It’s a very simple thing to do, but most people don’t do it.

For example, I have my own public Instagram account, and there are people who always give me kind comments. I great by these comments so I also provide comments to them. As a result, we grow a sense of supporting each other. If they are in trouble, I’m willing to help. I think this is the fundamental of creating fans.

I also look at all the comments on Youtube. I get negative comments every now and then but I also receive positive feedbacks. SNS is a very useful tool to build a fan base through interactions.

At applemint, We understand the importance of social network as I run my own public Youtube and Instagram account.

Again, the important thing on social network is the quality of the content and the interaction. It is not enough to just post very nice content unless you are a famous brand like Nike, Chanel, or Louis Vuitton.

What happens when you interact repeatedly?

What happens when you repeatedly interact? First, you will gain followers. And these followers are often high quality followers who will respond to your posts. In short, they are followers with high engagement.

If you spend a lot of money on advertising on Facebook and Instagram, you will naturally gain followers, but many of these followers are unresponsive to your posts. In other words, they are followers with low engagement.

So what good does it do if your followers respond to you every time you post? It is said that posts with a high engagement rate are more likely to appear in followers’ feeds.

For example, let’s say I have 1,000 followers on Instagram. If I post something, it’s not going to show up in the feeds of all of those 1000 people. If the engagement is low, unfortunately, my post won’t get much exposure. ….

It is also said that if a post has a high engagement rate, it is more likely to appear at the top of the list when your hashtag is being searched.

So, engagement is really important. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have, if you don’t have engagement, it’s meaningless!

NEXT ACTION

First, if the engagement rate of your posts is low, try interacting. You may try approaching and actively communicating with people who seem to be posting something related to your product or service. This will usually improve the engagement rate a bit.

Next, review the content of your posts again. Review the content of your posts to see if they are really meaningful to your followers and the people you reach. In this blog, we focused on the importance of “interacting”, but we also need to continue to improve the content of our posts.

At applemint, in addition to the interaction I talked about today, we are also implementing other measures to increase engagement on Instagram.

Instagram is not just about posting pretty pictures.If you are interested in applemint’s Instagram services, please contact us here!